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Very beginning... people still working out the kinks, and various teams and strategies came out. Iceman, Cable, Strider/Doom, and various other things came out of the woodwork as being very annoying. The fact that Iceman couldn't be chipped by most characters in the game scared some people for a while, although by the time it came to tournament play by the summer of 2000 people had figured it out.

Duc Do started out with Omega Red/Cable/Cyclops and eventually replaced Omega Red with Spiral, both of them based around having a first character that can fill the meter in order to enable Cable to have plenty of meter to shoot people to death with.

On both the east and west coast, Doom/BH became popular early for easy space control and chip damage. On the west coast, throwing down BH and then super jumping and throwing photon charges was the vogue; on the east coast, simply normal jumping back with his fierce "butter beam" and repeatedly calling BH was a simple and nasty trap.

Strider/Doom became popular on both coasts, with Alex Valle being the best Strider player in the west and Arturo Sanchez and Eddie Lee being the best in the east.

People also developed early Magneto tactics that involved simple air jumping into hyper grav cancelled into tempest.

Viscant was the early developer of DHC tactics, with Doom/Storm/AAA and Doom/Storm/Sentinel being his early teams.

One thing that was strikingly evident, at least at first, was that it seemed that the assist system made old school pixies that had dominated MvC1 completely obsolete. The early consensus was that MvC2 was going to be a game where defense and chip damage was going to carry the day. This was generally borne out in the first major tournament at B4. Duc's Spiral/Cable/Cyclops won the day, with Alex Valle attempting various teams to try to beat him in the grand final that wound up not working. Valle eventually started going to Strider/Doom/Sentinel to try to deal with Duc's Spiral, which led to Duc incorporating Sentinel's drones into his own team in replacement of Cyclops, and Cable shifting over to anti-air assist duty.

After B4, Blackheart started becoming more popular as a point character for simple attack and space control patterns once people realized that many anti-air assists could be used to set up inferno/HOD, with BH/Commando being the popular pairing on the west coast and BH/Cyclops in the east. This led to the development of BH/Sent/Commando on the west, which was used most famously by Valle and was probably his first team he began to dominate with for a while, along with Strider/Doom/Sentinel in response to Duc's Spiral/Cable/Sentinel evolution of his older Spiral/Cable/Cyclops teams.

It was about this time that Duc discovered the counter-AHVB. Quietly, Seattle was starting to become a regular force in holding tournaments regularly, and in their isolation they developed their own way of play that most people on the outside tended to sneer at but which worked for them very well. Meanwhile, Alex Valle adapted BH/Sent/Commando and was beating Duc regularly by then (this was around late 2000, early 2001), and the now-famous Justin Wong began to dominate in the New York area with Magneto/Cable/Cammy. Ricky Ortiz was the first west coast power to challenge Justin, using both Duc's Spiral/Cable/Sentinel team and his own Cable/Storm/Cyclops in a predictable pattern of, "use Spiral until I'm down to my last loss or two in a match, then go to Cable/Storm/AAA" that you could have traced like a computer program. However, Justin quickly seemed to figure out Ricky, and the questions began to rise as to whether or not Justin might be the east coast player that could finally break Duc and Valle's dominance in the game.

Justin took his Magneto/Cable/Cammy to the Midwest Championships in the late spring of 2001, where he first met Alex Valle and his BH/Sent/Commando. Justin's resounding defeat of Valle, 3 games to 1 in the winners' final and 4 to 1 in the grand final, shocked a lot of people and forced a re-evaluation of the balance of power between the coasts, as well as a hard look as to whether or not Magneto was a dominant character or not. However, at this same tournament Justin met with Viscant, learned that Storm/Sentinel's DHC was quite reliable, and told Viscant at that point that he intended to use it.

He came back at the B5 tournament in the summer of 2001 with it, which also featured a number of Japanese players. Seattle and the northwest began to make their own arrival there as well, with ten of the final 64 players in the tournament hailing from either Seattle or Portland seemingly out of nowhere -- many of them using Cable/Doom/Commando and Cable/BH/Commando, and winning a number of upsets over some very established California players early in the tournament. One of these ten was also a young fellow by the name of Rodolfo Castro, using Magneto/Cable/Sentinel-A. Up until that point (and for a long while after), nobody had any use at all for Sentinel's rocket punch assist, and it was considered a given that the drones were the best assist Sentinel had available. Rodolfo quietly placed in the top ten at B5 without anybody really knowing who he was; more of the attention at this tournament on Seattle players was on Rattana Phanthourath, who before Rodolfo had dominated Seattle and northwest MvC2 play.

However, Justin took the tournament without much difficulty, winning the grand final over Duc with Storm/Sentinel/Cammy and also beating Japan's best player in the winners' bracket 2-0 along the way, leaving his claim to being the best player in the world undisputed from that point forward. BH ceased to be a widely used character at about this point after Alex Valle fell to fifth place, and while Viscant managed to get third with his Doom/Storm teams (beating Valle's BH/Sent/Commando in the losers' bracket semifinals) his Storm/Sentinel also was a major factor.

Rodolfo finally "arrived" the following spring, establishing his dominance over the entire west coast over late 2001 and early 2002. It was at this point that the many uses of Magneto/Sentinel-A and Rodolfo's innovative Cable tactics became more widely known. People had played Magneto/Cable/Sentinel before, but "Row" was the first to use the rockete punch assist as a setup for Magneto and a countercall, and even other Seattle players were somewhat slow to employ it. Magneto/Storm/Psylockes (MSP) had been known since Duc came up with it in 2000, but it was about at this point that it began to become a widely used team as well. Rodolfo's rise in the west began to bring up speculation as to whether he would become the person who'd finally dethrone Justin Wong, and his Magneto/Cable/Sentinel-A team is to this day known as "Team Row".

Row and Justin met for the first time at the East Coast Championships in 2002, and Justin found himself facing both Rodolfo and his close Seattle competitor Jason Kuan. Another Seattle player, Scott Wong, managed to knock Justin into the losers' bracket, and Justin narrowly escaped being knocked out of the tournament altogether there by Thong Nguyen (who had previously eliminated Long "shadyk" Tran from the pools at B5 to much San Diego chagrin, so his silent reputation as a potential giant killer wasn't completely new at this point). Justin eventually defeated Kuan and his "Team Scrub" (Sentinel/Cable/Commando) in the losers' finals, but then Row dropped him unceremoniously in the first two games of the grand finals. However, Justin eventually went back to running away from Row's characters with Storm/Sent/Cammy and was able to out-patience Row with that.

Row prepared quietly in Seattle, starting to work on Sentinel/Storm/Commando as a potential secret weapon against Justin's Storm/Sentinel teams. Meanwhile, Justin went on to encounter "SiN" and his Team Scrub at the Midwest Championships in the same place he had defeated Valle to establish his throne a year previous, and discovered there that Team Scrub was a horrible matchup for Storm/Sentinel/Cammy. His throne was in peril there about as badly as it had been for a while, going down 3-0 in the first set of the grand finals (although he had the winners' advantage), as SiN seemed to solve all his tactics and he struggled to find a way to deal with it. Ironically, his answer to SiN's Team Scrub turned out to be Team Row, which was similar enough to his old Magneto/Cable/Cammy team that it wasn't very alien to him. However, the problems that Cable/Commando presented to any team that was relying on Cammy for close range control became evident -- Cammy will bounce off the first solid object that she hits, so Cable/Commando in particular creates a problem for it by dropping a human shield in front of Cable, and from that point forward Cable doesn't have to worry about either Storm or Sentinel any more as long as he keeps Commando in front of him. Justin's teams had relied heavily on Cammy for close range control up to this point, and it was here that he finally let go of her and shifted his main game plans to Storm/Sentinel/Cyclops. About this same time, Sanford Kelly was also starting to challenge him in New York with Sentinel/Storm/Commando as well, which came to be known as "Santhrax" after a common nickname for Sanford himself.

Justin and Row met again at the finals of the first Evolution in 2002. Row (much to the shouted objections of his fellow Seattle players in the audience) stayed with his regular team, either because he didn't yet wish to reveal his "secret weapon" yet after having experienced Justin's remarkable ability to adapt in person once before, or just because he wanted to see if he could solve Justin's Storm/Sentinel without having to go to it. Justin defeated him again, and after a tough fight against Combofiend in the losers' bracket, the rematch was set. Tom Cannon declared that the final match was going to be best of one over much booing from the audience (the auditorium at UCLA, where the tournament was being held, was wanting to close and threatening to kick the people out if they didn't wrap it up soon). Row went to Sent/Storm/Commando, and won the first "set" of one match against Justin. With much buzzing in the hall, the rematch was set, and Justin won the second game, and with it the tournament. This was probably the closest anybody came to beating Justin for the next two years, when finally Justin's fellow New Yorker Sanford managed to unseat him.

The rest of the game's history is pretty much a footnote after this point. New York's MvC2 players have only once been seriously challenged since (when Duc won a later Evolution tournament again to become the only person other than Justin to win more than one of the Evo/B series tournaments), although this is probably partly because Justin has been attending college and isn't as dominant as he was at his previous peak. Yipes is apparently the best player from New York right now, and was Duc's opponent in the finals of that Evolution and also won the latest one in 2007. However, Justin pretty much set the tone for modern MvC2 tactics starting in 2001, and while Rodolfo's Mag/Cable/Sent-A eventually inspired Magneto/Storm players elsewhere to start using Mag/Storm/Sent-A, most of the evolution of tactics since 2002 has been more incremental and less revolutionary.

About 45 minutes north. Palmdale, home of the OG Afroman! Haha! I used to drive to Hollywood every weekend for my "meds" ;). I would possibly have some interest scrubbing it up some time. Ive alwYs avoided things like these though, afraid of the people that would be there

Wait, so you can actually combine a low attack/assist with some kind of overhead and have it be unblockable?

I know in MvC2 there's a couple of low assists (Wolverine has one, IIRC), but trying to combine those with overheads didn't work real well. If the first-hitting attack was blocked, the second one would also be blocked while the victim was in blockstun even if the block was facing/standing/etc. the wrong way.

Possible, but even if it ends up not being a true unblockable in that sense, it's still a 50/50 mixup if you time it properly. Will they have to stand up to block the first hit? Will they have to crouch to block the first hit? They don't know because ideally the two are going to hit so close together that it could go either way.

That said, I don't know how viable it'd be because jump back blocks both. Unless you can manage to catch them on wakeup without them having an invulnerable reversal.

I need to learn the basics. All these things like tech hits and crossups and DHC are so confusing to me.

Several of us here have nearly two decades of either casual or competitive fight game experience, so don't be afraid to ask questions. For example:

Cross-Up

A cross-up up attack is when an opponent performs an attack while jumping just over your head so that it hits in the opposite direction from where they jumped from. Let's take Street Fighter II as an example. If Ryu is on the left side and attacks, you would normally block his attacks by holding right (away from him). If Ryu jumps over you and uses his jumping medium kick to cross you up then you would need to block by holding left because he passed just over you as the attack came out and is now on the other side of you.

Cross-Up variants: the fake cross-up (a jumping attack meant to look like a cross up but actually lands on the same side he jumped from) and the cross-under (a tool used in resets)

DHC (Delayed Hyper Cancel)

Sometimes referred to as a Delayed Hyper Combo, DHCs are powerful tools in MvC2 and TvC. To do a DHC, you input the command for one of your next character's Hypers while using a Hyper with your point character. That kinda sounds confusing but it isn't. I'll use Marvel vs Capcom 2 and a team of Ryu/Wolverine as an example. If I do Ryu's Shinkuu Hadoken (quarter circle forward + all three punches) and then input the command for Wolverine's Berserker Barrage (also quarter circle forward + all three punches) while Ryu is still doing his move then Ryu will cancel his super and Wolverine will immediately enter play using his. Basically, its doing a super while already doing a super, and is often used as a way to tag characters out safely.

I first heard it way back in this FAQ, sometime around '96 or so, when a local arcade had Children of the Atom and I was trying to figure out how to beat the game with Wolverine.

What exactly is the difference a magic series and a target combo? Are they not the same thing or am I misunderstanding one?

You can often skip a few hits of a magic series, there's more flexability in general. In MvC Strider's basic air combo is lp, lk, mp, mk, hp. But if you removed any one of those the magic series would still work (like lp, mp, hp or lk, mp, hp).

The idea is similar, normals that cancel into normals, but target combos are usually pretty specific.

I can only talk for TvC, but in that game L, L would (usually) chain but they were the same attack. Something a little more similar to the six button magic series is L, d.L, M, d.M, H, df.H. *Most* characters in TvC can do that, I can't think of any that can do standing M, M, H, H.

Wow this new thread has already been really helpful. I bought MvC2 at launch on the Dreamcast and have played it to death since then - I just honestly never got into the whole world of professional fighting, and my local arcade didn't really have much of a fight scene. So I've never really learned the proper terms for anything.

So I'll continue the parade of questions with: What is a tech hit? I see that I do them, I see it pop up on the screen - I just have never had any idea what they are, or what they're doing.

Thanks for the rundown of some of the terms guys. I tried some googling to find out some of the common terminology but all I could find was 'pringles', and all the other stuff was still confusing the shit out of me. Keep it up!

Wow this new thread has already been really helpful. I bought MvC2 at launch on the Dreamcast and have played it to death since then - I just honestly never got into the whole world of professional fighting, and my local arcade didn't really have much of a fight scene. So I've never really learned the proper terms for anything.

So I'll continue the parade of questions with: What is a tech hit? I see that I do them, I see it pop up on the screen - I just have never had any idea what they are, or what they're doing.

If memory serves (and it might not) "Tech Hit" is the term MvC2 throws on the screen after someone breaks a throw. Basically someone tried to throw you and you hit the throw command (forward or back + HP or HK) right after they did, causing you to "tech" their throw. You can only tech normal throws, but that can be important. When I played MvC2 I used Juggernaut a lot because he can combo after his HP throw in the corner for massive damage. If you tech that throw though he can't follow it up.

I think their called "Tech Hit" in Darkstalkers too, I'm used to different terminology from other games.

EDIT: I'm listening to the last Wakeup Shoryuken podcast and typing slower than molasses as a result haha.

You can tech before you take damage, or after you take damage, but it won't be the full damage. It leaves you in the air, and depending on when you do it and who against, you can still be vulnerable to followups.